Tag Archives: Music

Articles

Is Music The Key To Success?

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This is a great article from Joanne Lipman in the New York Times:

Multiple studies link music study to academic achievement. But what is it about serious music training that seems to correlate with outsize success in other fields?

The connection isn’t a coincidence. I know because I asked. I put the question to top-flight professionals in industries from tech to finance to media, all of whom had serious (if often little-known) past lives as musicians. Almost all made a connection between their music training and their professional achievements.

The phenomenon extends beyond the math-music association. Strikingly, many high achievers told me music opened up the pathways to creative thinking. And their experiences suggest that music training sharpens other qualities: Collaboration. The ability to listen. A way of thinking that weaves together disparate ideas. The power to focus on the present and the future simultaneously.

Personally, I think the WORST thing I see are these kids who spend 6 days a week, 4+ hours a day on SPORTS. Fucking SPORTS. All year round. I’m not against sports, I played Soccer for 8+ years as a kid, but I remember practices being 2 times a week, and a game on Saturday (or Sunday). No “conditioning” after practice. No DAILY practices.

I think it is the worst thing for kids, all this emphasis on sports.

Articles

Sibelius Refugees Building New Notation Program

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The computer notation market is dominated by two players, MakeMusic’s Finale and Avid’s Sibelius. Avid didn’t always own Sibelius, having bought it in 2006. Sibelius started WAY back on Acorn Computers. And Avid, in it’s infinite wisdom, decided to gut the core team who have worked on Sibelius for many many years and users were not happy about this. In my opinion, this is pretty much the death blow of any further development of the software. I think Avid will eventually just roll the whole program into ProTools at some point, to help it’s cash cow do better in the Consumer/Prosumer market against programs like Logic, Ableton, Reaper, Cubase……to name just a few.

Anyhow, the team that was developing Sibelius and that was sacked by Avid have been hired by Steinberg and tasked to create a new notation program. No actual betas or screen shots. A lot of lofty ideas though. Steinberg is a Yamaha subsidiary, meaning that funding probably isn’t an issue, and we will, at some point, see a notation product by them.

Am I excited? Not really….unless this new notation program contains an essential feature. The ability to open and properly convert Finale and Sibelius files into the program. Not the crappy MusicXML stuff. If they want me to use the program, then I need to be able to open my old files with no issues. Or they need to at least have a batch converter.

I don’t expect to see anything from this effort for at least a year. Hopefully, in my case, MakeMusic won’t go out of business in that interval.

Articles

Inside The Loudness Wars

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Interesting article about compression and loudness in modern music.

Within the world of audio, both on the consumer and pro sides, there has been no greater point of contention than the increasing levels of compression used to produce music.

The phenomenon grew to the point where it was given the name “loudness wars,” because it reached a level where one engineer would try to outdo another engineer by making his recording louder. The problem is that it employing compression destroyed the dynamic range of many of today’s recordings.

I hardly ever use that stuff when work on recordings. Also not a huge fan of pitch correction either. I mean, I do use the tools available, but I’d rather use them to ever so slightly enhance a recording, not totally change a recording.

Articles

5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music

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Steve Jobs changed a lot of things, including music. Thanks Steve!

5 Ways Steve Jobs Changed Music | Complex:

By putting the interests of artists and fans above those of executives and corporate shareholders, Steve Jobs turned the music industry power structure upside down. Every artist, producer, DJ or blogger who leverages their own creative resources and energy against all odds follows in his footsteps. #ThankYouSteve.

He always told people to listen to their heart and follow what they loved. "You can't connect the dots looking forward," Jobs once said, "you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

(Via www.complex.com)

Articles

Music Education and Brain Development 101

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But what transpires inside the brain (and which areas are affected) during music education? How does this early stimulation & nurturing translate into better scholastic performance? These relatively simple questions continue to be the focus of intense research efforts by developmental neurobiologists.

So let’s start our first column with the 30,000 foot and cellular perspectives. Research strongly suggests that music education causes the simultaneous and continuous stimulation of many brain regions. New connections (“wiring”) between brain cells are formed. Through ongoing music education, the wiring also benefits students in other academic domains.

Which areas of the brain are “recruited” during music education? The short answer is all major regions. Let’s review how the brain is organized and how each region is engaged during music education.

Also check out the Music Empowers Foundation
Articles

Talkin’ ’Bout i(Pod) Generation

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San Francisco Classical Voice had a great article about the iPod Generation
“The iPod (and, by extension, iTunes) not only revolutionized the world’s listening habits early in the last decade, expanding the sheer variety of music people listen to; it also changed the manner in which people think of and hear music. It’s true that not everyone has an iPod (or an iPhone or an MP3 player of some sort), but virtually everyone understands its significance. The device holds music that fits in your pocket, offering you an easy way to listen to vastly different things, even a way to juxtapose and to mash-up music or sounds that would normally seem as far apart as a Formula One racecar and a pony.

The most significant musical inventions from Apple’s iPod (and, by extension, iTunes) are the shuffle, the mashup, and the playlist.”

I think the author left out Music Hoarding…..I think that is a huge contribution to music. You now don’t have to look for an album in your collection, it’s there. And as your collection grows, it is invaluable to hear 20 versions of “Impressions” or “Giant Steps”. Playlists are nice, the mashup can be fun, and shuffling has its place but hoarding is where it is at. That is the wondrous thing Steve Jobs and the iPod brought us.

Thanks Steve……now lets create a playlist of a mashup of everything that has the word blues in it……ahhh, 5,568 songs? I guess we shall be using the shuffle on this…..

Videos

Rock Band Dumbing Down Music?

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I would tend to agree, though the game and Guitar Hero have exposed people to some great, classic music that they would not have known otherwise. I’d rather have kids and people listen to some of the tunes on Guitar Hero/Rock Band than some of these “rap artists” and whatnot.

Also, on a related note, anyone who has Rock Band and the drum set should check out this. You can use the Rock Band drum controller (the newer one that comes with World Tour) with this piece of software and actually play the instrument. Very cool.